/g/ - girl talk

I developed a fear of medication so I don't take medicine for pain. However, it's not as bad for me as it used to be. I know keto gets a bad rag, because people like to meme it as eating cheese to lose weight, but changing my diet has helped me exponentially. Just incorporating a low carb diet in general. Pic attached is my cycle now, before I used to only bleed about 3 to 4 times a year and the cramps were terrible. I used to fall asleep dissociating, not aware of my surroundings, just terrible brain fog for the first 2 to 3 days of my cycle. Now I just have some nausea and mild anxiety.
Also with PCOS I have thinning hair since I was in high school and acne but it's not as bad as it used to be now that I'm in my late 20s. I grew up chunky so I don't know if that was PCOS or just my family's diet, but I did notice it was very hard for me to maintain my weight and eat the recommended amount of calories unless I wanted to exercise for 2 hours a day.
My mom and my aunt have PCOS, which I'm not surprised because it is hereditary, and I've asked them questions to help me decide what choices I should make to lessen symptoms. Both have had terrible reactions to birth control, so I made the choice not to get prescribed birth control.

Question I want to ask, I don't know if this is PCOS related, but does anybody else have a very hard time with tampons? I can't wear tampons for not even a minute or I will feel extremely nauseous, like I'm already developing TSS.
Also, does anybody else have hyperpigmentation issues?

I have pcos, I have been able to manage my weight being vegetarian but I haven't had pelvic pain in a couple of years now. i do get hirsutism tho really bad, it sucks. I had electrolysis done for 6 or 9 months once a week and it didn't get rid of it completely and then when i stopped (because i moved to a different country) it completely came back. lol I've been doing the home laser since September and it only works a little on my legs, not anywhere I need it to.
also, acne never goes away but I've been able to manage it the last couple of years.
>>176764
i never had an issue with tampons but I haven't had a real period in over 9 months. I got an iud over a year ago, it made my period stop. I'm thinking about taking it out and going back to BC but im terrified about weight gain.

>>176764
is your hair still thinning anon?
my doctor prescribed spiro for hair loss but my other symptoms are under control,so i don't really want to fuck myself over by suffering sudden hair loss again due to changing hormones when i need to stop it

>>176791
It's still thin, but progression has stopped. I just learned to live with it. I don't think minoxidil would help us because it's androgenic alopecia. I feel like that second puberty we go through at around 25 helped with the stopping of progression.

Do you think PCOS could be a possibility if I have every symptom besides irregular periods? They are like clockwork and only 4 days but they are heavy and hellish. Glad I have an appointment coming up.

>>176830
Yes, it's like that for me too. Very rarely they get irregular, but honestly that's the easiest part of pcos imo

>>176764
Probably cervical issues, I have a spot on my cervix and I can't wear tampons or even have sex because it's sore. get your cervix checked out you may have a spot there.

>>176764
I am sorry for samefagging but I forgot with thinning hair and skin issues I take straight up collagen and it helps strengthen my hair and my skin. Like I take shisiedo The collagen powder every day and mix it with every matcha latte I have 3 times a day and it helps my skin stay strong and keeps my hair from thinning.

>>176850
I thought ingesting collagen was just a meme? Does it really works? My hair Started thinning since I turned 25 (so 4 years ago) and it makes me depresso.

>>176861
yeah it works but you have to be consistent, like it took me half a year of ingesting it 3 times a day before I got results, buying it in powder form is cheaper than buying collagen drinks.

>>176861
also recommend depending on the brand mixing it into strong flavor drinks, or putting it into soups if you occasionally have soup for lunch or dinner, as depending on the cheaper brands of powdered collagen it can taste some what strong, although shisiedos the collagen has literally no taste, I still out of habit put 2 table spoons of the powder in my drink cup before brewing my latte in the kuerig. theres also pill form and I also occasionally when I have a bonus buy birds nest to make birds nest soup, although not recommended for long term use as it's pricey and counterfeiting is a coming thing if you look for what they call bloodsnest. The ancient chinese ate that shit for beauty and swallow spit is rich in collagen. I normally have it once a month, or if I feel like my intake is lacking, but collagen is what helps your skin stay strong and your hair nice as that what your skin needs. Theres also pill form too.

>>176861
basically its nourishing your body because part of the hair thinning comes with age, so if you take steps to nourish your body you'll see improvement. but thats just me, I also take pearl powder and ginseng to offset my fatigue. depending on the state of your hormones phyto estrogen can work as for some with pcos have higher levels of testorone, if you cant have birth control for reasons such as bad reactions to being flooded with hormones, then by taking phytoestrogens it sort of helps your body produce its on supply in some women, trannies take it to help resettle fat distrubtion to hips and thighs, and women in menopause take it to help offset some symptoms because they're not producing as much estrogen, but its recommended to do so with caution as some women with pcos end up having it due to having estrogen on overdrive.if your t outweighs your e supply, and your body has little of e then taking phyto estrogen can help boost your own supply, but thats only for that case, so use with caution, it can also help with fat distrubtion by forcing your body to have more a butt and hips, and less on your stomach.

I just took a blood test and the only irregular result was too high testosterone levels (2.3 nmol/L). Apparently this can mean PCOS.

Maybe dumb question but have any of you had your test levels checked? Are they also high?

My periods have always been irregular (except for the last year they've been perfectly regular), and I can't say I have any PCOS symptoms.

I will book a doc appointment to check it's just that everything is being cancelled here for months because of the stupid vax program.

I might have PCOS but COVID means I won't see a specialist until mid 2022 at the earliest. Just wondering if anyone diagnosed has a similar case as mine. Or knows of any other conditions this could be.

>elevated T and DHEAS, everything else normal
>hirsutism
>regular periods, 3-5/10 pain level so not unbearable
>occasionally bad pain when ovulating, only a couple times a year though
>PMDD-tier mood issues with my cycle
>overweight

Diagnosed with PCOS like few months ago, have Testosterone on an average level, but my Androstenedione was always too high. Have been struggling with acne for years and ended with Accutane for like 12 months (20mg per day) and for the last half a year got some pimples but they're small and nothing like these I've got before.

I have been losing my hair for years now as well and I hope birth control will help with that one.
My periods weren't super painful, yet I have been losing enough blood to become anemic, so nowadays I take iron pills all the time.

Besides that remember to check your glucose/insulin, women with PCOS often have insulin resistance which may lead to diabetes.

Does anyone else just get so horrified they may be pregnant even though they have very minimal sexual contact? I haven't had a period since late May and I recently got diagnosed with PCOS and have taken tons of home and doctor pregnancy tests and all have been negative but the fear consumes me. I've never even had unprotected sex, just outercourse but I've been just cramping all most every single day and weird single days of bleeding. Does anyone else with PCOS have these symptoms?

Does anyone else here have "lean" PCOS but with a stubborn fat layer on the stomach that will never go away? I just want to be rid of it and have a flat stomach instead of looking and feeling slightly bloated constantly, I've never been anything but a healthy to low weight range but genetics screwed me over with this and a predisposition to diabetes. I took inositol daily for three months this year and didn't feel like it did anything, gone low/no carb, used to live on a lean diet with no added sugar but my body never really changes for the better.
>>218162
Like you, high T was one of my only known symptoms, the other being long, irregular cycles. I also attribute my hair loss and mental health issues to PCOS too but I can only claim a shaky correlation. The NHS diagnosed me and it was before COVID, with an endocrinologist who never actually saw me in person. They said as long as I met at least two or three criteria on the list of symptoms, then I had a PCOS diagnosis, even after they gave me an ultrasound showing I had no literal ovarian cysts (the ones I mentioned are the ones they accepted). Drives me crazy to feel this unsure still when I still have the literal confirmation letter from them, now I'm a believer that "PCOS" is a pretty lousy name for a bunch of several poorly understood, poorly related metabolic problems.

>>438952
>now I'm a believer that "PCOS" is a pretty lousy name for a bunch of several poorly understood, poorly related metabolic problems.

I hate how true this is. Women's health is so vastly understudied so they create this syndrome of which you have to have 3 or whatever symptoms to meet the criteria. So if you have thinning head hair, facial hair and no periods you have PCOS but a different woman has insulin resistance, super long periods and stubborn weight she can't shift has the same syndrome? When battling completely different symptoms. You don't even need to have cysts to have polycystic ovarian syndrome, wtf? It feels like PCOS means very little, it's like IBS. They don't know wtf is going on with our bodies. Sorry for a rant, I'll sage.

>>438952
>now I'm a believer that "PCOS" is a pretty lousy name for a bunch of several poorly understood, poorly related metabolic problems.

I agree. I thought being diagnosed with PCOS years ago would be an eye-opener and have doctors be able to help me, but my experience trying to navigate this it's more of an umbrella term. (I'm American though and you know how the healthcare is here, so YMMV.)

>>439190
>Women's health is so vastly understudied so they create this syndrome of which you have to have 3 or whatever symptoms to meet the criteria. So if you have thinning head hair, facial hair and no periods you have PCOS but a different woman has insulin resistance, super long periods and stubborn weight she can't shift has the same syndrome?

This is something that confused me too. When I was diagnosed, I was solely offered birth control to fix my testosterone/estrogen levels, even though my medical record shows I have regular periods and even though I'm strictly childfree, I could easily have a child if I wanted to. I just have trouble losing weight, which is what I was seeing a doctor for. I was hoping that knowing I have PCOS I could be prescribed something for insulin or have different tests done, but no. No prescription for anything but birth control.

The beard… it thickens.

>>439255
OP of >>438952 here, they put me on birth control too, not even to correct my high T but just to make sure I had more regular i.e shorter cycles. It doesn't benefit me at all to have periods more often so I stopped. Sorry to hear they didn't do shit for you besides a pointless prescription, I hope you can tail off if you think you don't need it, I think that basically doing HRT at our ages is a bit of a risk if we're not sure it's actually treating anything.

I will never look cute or even normal I have the largest eyebrows on anyone I've ever seen man or woman they take up half my forehead. I can wear a mask for the rest of my face but eyebrows can't even be lasered. Fml

Why the fuck do hormonal cysts exist, I fucking hate having to do salt baths for the cysts that show up on my vag and I hate that I can’t move or run without accidentally popping a cyst on my ovaries. I haven’t had them for almost a year but now they’re all coming back and it hurts to sit down